Harry stood up and moved toward his younger self, crossing the distance in three measured steps.
The boy stiffened immediately, shoulders tensing, green eyes flicking up warily like a cornered animal's. Harry understood that reaction perfectly. If their positions were reversed, he would be just as nervous, maybe worse.
The knowledge that a stranger, no matter how helpful, regardless of his face being yours too, was about to probe the deepest part of his being, hell, having the same face would even put him more on guard.
"Relax, kid," Harry said lightly, letting a flicker of genuine reassurance soften his voice, though it didn't quite reach his cold eyes. "It'll be over in a minute." He paused, then added with a small, crooked grin that didn't quite reach his eyes, "Though you should grit your teeth."
That instantly wiped the small trace of relief from the boy's face, replacing it with stark, pure dread as he started to wonder what was about to happen.
What Harry was about to do should have been an act of pure impossibility for him on a normal setting.
Even a Campione wasn't omnipotent. Sure, he held the Authority of Morrigan, giving him dominion over death, but none of that should allow him to touch something as fundamental as a soul piece embedded in a living being.
Normally, this would be beyond him.
But Harry wasn't normal. He was a King who held the powers of multiple Heretic Gods, and he had learned to use them in other ways, too.
He had two Authorities that could do the job, could cheat, and make this impossibility a reality, Odin's Wisdom and Anansi's Weave. He considered using Odin's power, perhaps to leverage the collected knowledge of the Norns or the ancient Runes to manipulate soul magic, but he decided to try something else first, a more delicate way.
He was going to use Weave, his Authority from the Spider God, Anansi.
Harry inhaled slowly, grounding himself entirely in the present moment. He extended his awareness, preparing to shift his perception into the deeper reality of magical causality.
His eyes began to glow.
The world changed.
It dulled, color draining away as if reality itself had been submerged in ash. Sound faded to a distant hum. Depth flattened. The color of the physical room vanished, looking like it came out of a black and white painting.
And then—
The strings appeared.
They were everywhere.
Thin, luminous threads stretching infinitely, connecting everything to everything else. Tables, chairs, and books each had their own faint string.
Living beings were not. They were dense, vibrant tangles of color.
Humans glowed with thick bundles of red strings, the color of life force and vitality, interwoven with other hues that marked individuality.
Hermione's threads carried a steady, organized brown hue that spun tightly. Tonks shimmered pink, erratic but warm, seemingly waving widely around. Ginny's were reddish-brown. Ron's were so red they almost blended together, and Sirius's threads were black. Harry almost burst out laughing at the irony of that.
Harry turned his gaze to his younger self.
There they were. The core of the problem is the dark magic around the scar on his forehead.
Two strings twisted tightly together.
One glowed vibrant green, unmistakably Harry's core essence, his powerful life string. The other was black. Rotting. Wrong. Looking like it had been cut in different areas.
This was the Horcrux, no doubt about it, the ugly thing violently twisted into a form that seemed to concentrate around the famous lightning scar.
Harry exhaled slowly, focusing his supreme will.
"Don't move," he commanded, his voice carrying the inescapable weight of Authority, a vibration that locked the boy's muscles.
Young Harry froze instantly. He could only stare, wide-eyed, as the older man reached out, above his head.
Harry worked with care, untangling the intertwined strands. This wasn't about brute strength he had to be careful when using this power.
Power meant nothing here unless he wanted to kill his young self by mistake.
After all, Anansi's Authority was not like his other authority. He was the god of stories, knowledge, and trickery, and Weave came from his domain over the fundamental story of existence. He could weave things into reality, and by cutting the thread of something, he could destroy its place in the narrative completely.
The first time he experimented with this power, he had thought that massive power was the key when using the authority, but he was wrong. For Weave, it was Will. Even a weak person could stop him from manipulating their string if they had a strong enough will to reject his intrusion. That was what made him not use this authority in battle, for he'd meet would be weak willed.
But a soul fragment had not much will on its own, it was merely a parasitic anchor, a desperate survival mechanism clinging to life.
Once the green (Harry) and black (Voldy) strings were separated, Harry gripped the thick, pulsing black one, the soul piece, and funneled divine power into his hand.
Young Harry started screaming.
The sound ripped through the room, a raw, inhuman sound, as the boy shook, he was trashing around and screaming.
"STOP. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Sirius roared, lunging forward, instantly hauled back by a desperately struggling Remus and Moody.
He could see what the edge of his vision that even they wanted to join in and stop him, but they didn't, and that alone showed him that while they wouldn't simply replace one leader for another, the fact that Moody had not attacked proved the man at least wasn't giving him a chance.
Harry ignored them all. His gaze was locked on the black thread.
He pulled, with a final tug, and he broke the string.
The black string snapped.
A shrill, agonizing, and inhuman screech tore through the air as thick black smoke erupted from the scar on young Harry's forehead. It writhed and twisted like a dying serpent.
The sound was so awful, so laden with pure evil and agonizing panic, that everyone clutched their ears, their bones vibrating with the assault.
The smoke shrieked one last, impossibly high note… then dissolved into nothing, banished from the world.
Silence crashed down, leaving a ringing in everyone's ears.
"What the hell was that?" Arthur Weasley finally managed to croak, lowering his hands, his face pale with terror.
"That... was a fragment of Voldemort dying," Harry answered, pulling his hand back and looking at it with utter revulsion, as if he had plunged it into sewage. He made a disgusted face, then immediately summoned a torrent of cold water and soap, scrubbing his hand furiously. "Disgusting. Knowing I just held Voldemort's deepest, most twisted part in my bare hands."
Young Harry swayed, the physical and spiritual shock catching up, and collapsed entirely into the chair, passing out instantly.
"Harry!" Ron and Hermione shouted, rushing to his side, their previous shock replaced by immediate panic for their friend.
"What's wrong with him?!" Ginny cried, scrambling forward.
"Don't go crying, nothing is wrong," Harry said, wiping his hand dry and dropping back into his own seat with a weary sigh. "He's just exhausted. He needs a deep sleep, and he'll be good as new, better even. The link is gone, and Voldemort is no longer by his side."
Tonks crossed her arms, staring at the unconscious boy and the skin where the scar had been. It faded, leaving only a small mark. "So that's it? You just… waved your hand and bam—Voldy begone?" She looked utterly skeptical, yet the evidence of the shrieking black smoke and the boy's clean forehead was undeniable.
Harry gave her a genuine, albeit tired, grin. "Yeah, that's it. Pretty much."
She shook her head, a slow, dazed motion, still processing the sheer casualness of the impossible act. "That's insane."
"Welcome to my life," he muttered. Where the impossible became possible.
Her expression sobered instantly, shifting back to the pragmatic problem at hand. "What about the rest?"
Harry glanced at her, sensing the familiar pull of her moral core. "The remaining fragments?"
She nodded, the desperate hope returning.
He sighed, the sound heavy with annoyance. "You really don't know when to stop asking for things, do you? I've saved the kid's life, which Dumbledore was actively plotting to end."
Silence fell again.
"I've already helped," he continued calmly. "What makes you think I'll keep doing more? My world is fine. My war is done." To be honest, he wouldn't have done even this if Tonks hadn't asked. The other six Horcruxes were another matter entirely, involving long-term investment and high risk.
Hermione spoke up softly, her voice still trembling from the shock, from where she was sitting close to the passed-out little Harry."You said there were seven. Can you at least tell us what they are?"
Harry studied her for a moment, seeing the same fierce, knowledge-driven mind his own Hermione possessed. He nodded. He owed the world nothing, but he had nothing against sharing information. "Fine. I'll give you the list."
"If your world is 100% like my own, then they would be:" He began ticking them off on his fingers, his expression grim, listing items of immense magical and historical value with the casualness of a shopping list.
"The diary, destroyed in your second year already, though you didn't know what it was at the time." "The scar—now gone." "The ring of House Gaunt." "The cup of Hufflepuff. Gone centuries ago."
"What?!" Tonks yelped, shock giving way to astonishment at the artifacts listed. "Helga Hufflepuff's cup?"
Harry continued unfazed.
"The locket of Slytherin."
Another collective gasp.
"The diadem of Ravenclaw."
"I thought that was lost! It's one of the greatest missing relics of Hogwarts!" Hermione cried.
"And finally," Harry finished, holding up his last finger, "the snake he always moves around with, Nagini."
The room was dead silent. The list sounded like a demented scavenger hunt across history.
"How do we even find all that?" Hermione demanded, her voice rising to a near-shriek of despair. "Some of them have been missing for decades! The diadem hasn't been seen since Rowena Ravenclaw's time! How did he get it"
Harry laughed before calming them with a wave of his hand. "Well, lucky for you, I know where they are. Or where they should be at least."
He leaned in, dropping his voice conspiratorially, yet maintaining his tyrannical intensity.
"The closest one?" He smiled, a dark glint in his eyes. "The locket of Slytherin."
Sirius frowned, instantly suspicious. "How close are we talking here?"
Harry laughed, shaking his head. "Closer than you can imagine. Much, much closer. In fact..."
Then he said it.
"It's in this house."
"What?!" Sirius exploded, jumping out of his chair as if the furniture itself had betrayed him. He whirled around, eyeing the dark corners of the room as if the locket might leap out.
"Kreacher," Harry called calmly, the Authority in his voice silencing Sirius's rising fury.
The elf appeared instantly, his large eyes wide and fearful, as if sensing the coming confrontation.
"Bring me the locket Regulus gave you now," Harry commanded. The elf looked like he wanted to disagree, his lips opening to protest, but one sharp glare from Harry, a glare that promised retribution, shot him up, and he vanished with a pop.
"Regulus… I should have known," Sirius growled out, the disgust etched on his face. "The dark wanker must have trusted him to look after it, trying to keep Dark artifacts in the house, even in death!"
"It's not what you think, Sirius," Harry said.
Kreacher reappeared moments later, clutching a tarnished locket, and then collapsed onto the floorboards, weeping uncontrollably.
"Kreacher failed… Kreacher failed Master Regulus…" he started bawling, his tiny body rocking back and forth. "Master told Kreacher to destroy it, but Kreacher failed…"
Sirius froze, his anger draining away, replaced by confusion. The words 'Master Regulus' and 'destroy' did not compute. "What did you say?" he asked, looking utterly lost, like he was hearing a foreign language.
Harry decided to deliver the final, devastating blow.
"Sirius. Regulus didn't have the locket to keep it safe. He discovered the truth about the fragments, about what Voldemort had done, and he turned on him. He stole the real locket and replaced it with a fake, a note to the Dark Lord inside. He went to the cave with the plan to destroy the Horcrux."
The words hung in the air, heavy and crystalline.
"You see, the truth is that your brother Regulus found out about this fragments and had decided to destroy it, it was actually how he died, and before he died, he gave Kreacher the job to destroy it."
Sirius stared at the locket and the miserable, weeping elf, his entire world, the black-and-white. The hated brother he thought was a fanatic Death Eater had died a noble, self-sacrificing hero attempting to undo the Dark Lord's immortality.
———————————————————
If you want to read ahead and access 40 advanced chapters, check the patreon. $4 Dollars
Link:patreon/Phantomking785